[Lifesaving] Southampton Freshers' Competition 2012
This weekend was the first BULSCA lifesaving competition of the year. Taking place in Southampton, as has been traditional in the last few years, the Freshers' competition is designed to ease new University lifesavers into the experience of BULSCA competitions.
The St Andrews sent only a single team of Seacows, none of whom were truly Freshers! I've been doing this for some time now, and Teddy has been competing for three years. The two girls on the team, Robyn and Hanna, joined the club last year, have been to a couple of competitions as bodies, and have each competed once before. We did have a Fresher with us though; Amandine came along to see what it was all about, and to act as a body.
We couldn't leave until 5pm on Friday thanks to Hanna's Chemistry labs, so it was dark by the time we set out. The journey went fairly smoothly, barring a small adventure around Birmingham owing to a closed section of motorway, and we only stopped twice. We eventually arrived about 2am, much earlier than we'd originally feared, and settled down to sleep in the house of one of the Southampton club members.
The Freshers' competition is organised slightly differently to most of the BULSCA competitions, with all of the non-Fresher A-teams pushed to the end of the SERC draw. Supposedly this is to allow the Freshers' teams to watch the best wet SERC examples, but it doesn't always work out that way! Moreover the speed event heats are run in reverse order, fastest to slowest, again so that the newer competitors can see how it's supposed to be done.
As such, we were quite late on in the SERC draw. Not quite as late as last year, but we were still in isolation for a good four hours. When we eventually got to do something our dry SERC went pretty well, although we missed a couple of things with the asthmatic and drug user, and the wet SERC was very good. Again though, I wasn't entirely happy with my priorities, or with some of the time and personnel allocations that I made.
The speeds were pretty decent. We only got two casualties rescued in the rope throw; Hanna's throws were so close, but Robyn has very short arms and couldn't quite reach. The obstacles relay was ok, but I was very impressed with the swim-tow that we did. Both Hanna and Robyn are significantly smaller than Teddy and I, and less strong and fast swimmers, so we'd spent quite some time debating our order. But they both did very well indeed. It was strange starting the race rather than finishing it for a change, but actually kind of fun.
The social was pretty typical, although the "relive your childhood theme" meant that there were loads of balloons around. I spent most of it chatting to friends that I hadn't seen for a while, and catching up with what some of the people at other clubs were up to.
In the end we can 15th out of 31 teams, which fulfilled my aim of placing in the top half of the results. 7th in the wet SERC was brilliant, but 14th in the dry was a bit disappointing.
The next competition is in two weeks at Bristol University. I'll be heading down, and at the moment it looks like I'll be competing once again.
The St Andrews sent only a single team of Seacows, none of whom were truly Freshers! I've been doing this for some time now, and Teddy has been competing for three years. The two girls on the team, Robyn and Hanna, joined the club last year, have been to a couple of competitions as bodies, and have each competed once before. We did have a Fresher with us though; Amandine came along to see what it was all about, and to act as a body.
We couldn't leave until 5pm on Friday thanks to Hanna's Chemistry labs, so it was dark by the time we set out. The journey went fairly smoothly, barring a small adventure around Birmingham owing to a closed section of motorway, and we only stopped twice. We eventually arrived about 2am, much earlier than we'd originally feared, and settled down to sleep in the house of one of the Southampton club members.
The Freshers' competition is organised slightly differently to most of the BULSCA competitions, with all of the non-Fresher A-teams pushed to the end of the SERC draw. Supposedly this is to allow the Freshers' teams to watch the best wet SERC examples, but it doesn't always work out that way! Moreover the speed event heats are run in reverse order, fastest to slowest, again so that the newer competitors can see how it's supposed to be done.
As such, we were quite late on in the SERC draw. Not quite as late as last year, but we were still in isolation for a good four hours. When we eventually got to do something our dry SERC went pretty well, although we missed a couple of things with the asthmatic and drug user, and the wet SERC was very good. Again though, I wasn't entirely happy with my priorities, or with some of the time and personnel allocations that I made.
The speeds were pretty decent. We only got two casualties rescued in the rope throw; Hanna's throws were so close, but Robyn has very short arms and couldn't quite reach. The obstacles relay was ok, but I was very impressed with the swim-tow that we did. Both Hanna and Robyn are significantly smaller than Teddy and I, and less strong and fast swimmers, so we'd spent quite some time debating our order. But they both did very well indeed. It was strange starting the race rather than finishing it for a change, but actually kind of fun.
The social was pretty typical, although the "relive your childhood theme" meant that there were loads of balloons around. I spent most of it chatting to friends that I hadn't seen for a while, and catching up with what some of the people at other clubs were up to.
In the end we can 15th out of 31 teams, which fulfilled my aim of placing in the top half of the results. 7th in the wet SERC was brilliant, but 14th in the dry was a bit disappointing.
The next competition is in two weeks at Bristol University. I'll be heading down, and at the moment it looks like I'll be competing once again.
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